Many migrant workers in Beijing carry a certain type of bag made of duvet covers or other leftover textiles. The shape of the bag is as simple as it is ingenious. It solely consists of one rectangular piece of textile and features only two seams. Folded crosswise, the textile creates a bag which surprisingly holds a lot of volume, making it the perfect bag for workers who carry a great deal of luggage when coming to the city in search of employment.

I appropriated this design vernacular to create a series of bags.

The textile chosen for the bags are repurposed red banners which are ubiquitous in China. The standard dimensions of the banners also makes it a suitable choice for this type of bag. Used mostly for restaurant advertisements, messages of celebration from companies or schools, or for government regulation propaganda, it seems a perfect choice to make this makeshift bag from the leftovers of Chinese urban life.

In China, when I would ask if I could take a picture of somebody or something, the answer I heard the most was: ‘maybe’. I soon discovered that in China ‘maybe’ is used in a different way than in the West. Sometimes ‘maybe’ is used as a polite way of saying ‘no’. But on other occasions people really just mean ‘maybe’. ‘Maybe Beijing’, the name of the bag, refers to the opportunity Beijing promises to all who arrive there. ‘Maybe Beijing’ also stands for the dream of enriching your life and becoming prosperous.

Origin of the banners: NCUT (North China University of Technology) used to advertise the student ping pong tournament; Beijing Medical School, used to celebrate the 90 year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party; various restaurants throughout Beijing, used for promotional announcements.

see also: The Floating Population & After Hour Shopping Mall

NP3 | Hofstraat 21 | 9712 JA | Groningen | 050-3138260| www.np3.nu

The area around the steel factories of Cockerill-Sambre, Liege. As a kid I spend a lot of time in Belgium, I grew up 20 km from the Dutch-Belgium-German border. Crossing the border to the German site never made a big impact on me as a kid. It more or less looked the same. But crossing the Belgium border was something totally different. First city you hit, Visé, already felt like a far away country. To me, as a kid, it felt like something was really really wrong here. Later I came to appreciate the history of the area around Liege and it’s importance it once had.

The coming weeks I’ll be working on my exhibition at NP3 in Groningen, the Netherlands. The exhibition ‘After-Hour Shopping Mall’ shows my latest work made in Beijing.
You can follow the process via their webcam.

There were some though decisions to make. And so the beautiful and surreal series on the castles of Juzifang will not be presented this time. I have different plans for that series…

Urban village in the process of transition, outside of 5th ring road Beijing.

A cute little project inspired by the complex city of Metro Manila. Excerpts of Manila advertisements, most of them on cash flow. I used them for my new business cards.

What an Inspector Verification Officer is supposed to be? Beats me. It might just be the guy who checks upon the verification officer. That’s something I’ve seen a lot. People who check upon other peoples jobs, I guess it’s a way to avoid corruption.

I must say that Manila inspired me a lot, not only visual but also on language. I wrote lyrics for the song ‘Win or loose, we go shopping after the election’. A famous saying by Miss Marcos. If my band ‘After die flöte’ will ever see the rise of daylight again this will surely be one of our hits!

A gas station I pas by weekly on my way to the school for migrant children where I volunteer as an English teacher. It’s a fine example of some good old fashioned neoclassicist ‘design-it-yourself’ architecture.
The Carrefour is not very far, hence the bus that I guess takes customers to and from the hypermarket. Although I know Carrefour has it’s hypermarkets all over the globe I still associate it with summer holidays in France. As soon as you hit the first hypermarché you knew we were in France.